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Strawberry Vinegar, of Delicious Flavour

A sweet syrup made by steeping strawberries in vinegar and sugar, then boiling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Vinegar, of Delicious Flavour

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the strawberries

  1. Remove the stalks from the strawberries and place them in large glass jars or wide-necked bottles.

  2. Pour 1½ pints of vinegar over the strawberries and cover with thick paper.

  3. Let the strawberries steep for 3 to 4 days.

  4. Pour off the vinegar and strain it through a jelly bag or cloth.

  5. Replace the strawberries with an equal weight of fresh strawberries and repeat the process after 3 days.

Make the syrup

  1. After the final steeping, drain the liquid and mix it with an equal quantity of powdered sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture over a clear fire until it boils for 5 minutes, then skim it thoroughly.

  3. Pour the syrup into clean stone pitchers or large china jugs and cover with a thick cloth until the next day.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the syrup in pint or half-pint bottles and cork them lightly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe strawberries
Supply the fruit flavour and colour that the vinegar draws out.
Fine pale white vinegar
Extracts the strawberry flavour and adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Highly-refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup, gives it body, and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar syrup for 5 minutes. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully and sets the concentration. Too short a boil leaves a thin syrup that may not keep well, while over-boiling makes it too thick once cooled.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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